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For years, Dove Award-winning artist Margaret Becker allowed life to push her along, while she bypassed dreams, aspirations, and meaningful moments along the way. Her new book, Coming Up for Air, chronicles her journey from an overall feeling of "disconnect" to a more satisfying, simplified, and fruitful existence. Using a series of short, journal-like entries, the book challenges women to become more self-aware and make definitive, positive life changes—to let go of outward expectations and pursue an authentic life.

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I couldn't fully shut off the shower this morning. The head dribbled water for about an hour and then made the transition to fat, sporadic drips. It reminded me of the leak in my laundry room. It was the intermittent kind, easy to ignore.

Leaks are evil. I despise them. They are subtle and elusive. Behind the facade, they slowly erode away structure and integrity in secret—unhampered, unchecked. By the time the evidence of their hideous mission announces itself outwardly, the majority of the damage is done.

I learned this the day the damp spot on my ceiling at home swelled from a quarter to a pancake. I got up on the step stool to inspect. Tentatively raising my pointer finger to feel the level of dampness, I touched the pancake ever so gently. The brown patch gave way and all at once my entire hand was swallowed up into the netherworld of pipes and insulation.

Just one tiny push, and drywall rudely crumbled onto my face, sending me sputtering and swaying.

It's odd what you think about in moments like that. I had two distinct things on my mind as I clung to balance:

"If I fall and break my neck, how long will it be before someone comes to find me?"

and …

"Betrayer!"

I was miffed with the drywall. I saw it as a conspirator. All these years, I'd contentedly trusted it with its responsibility—to hide all those things I don't need to know about and to retain the magic of all those things I take for granted. Underneath our beautiful lives together, I washed enough towels and jeans to drain Lake Meade. It's seen me first thing in the morning without make-up, even naked. We had a relationship!

I trusted that drywall. I counted on it. I was convinced that if it knew something bad might be afoot, it would have immediately let me know. Not with some tiny indication, like the little dot of off-white stain that appeared about six months ago—no. Surely it could've served up the pancake a little more quickly, maybe thrown in an alarming color like rust or black.

When I removed my hand, I saw everything I didn't care to know about, and the knowing made me responsible to it.

That is how I feel about what's been happening since I "escaped" my former life. I poked a hole in the facade and now the drywall is crumbling down.

There seems no end to it. With each thought comes another, and then another. A million things connected to a million other things.

Things like permission. My "whens" and "ifs" are based upon permission. Waiting for permission to do something. Waiting for someone or something to give me permission—to live, to try, to be. I am a full-grown adult, yet somewhere in my pipes, I've been waiting for permission to flow.

At what age do you stop needing permission? And this permission, is it a leftover from the childhood mission, to "lay low and be obedient"? Did I learn it so well then that it is running through my entire infrastructure now, unable to retire itself? Am I so busy doing what's "right" and expected that I am missing the personal journey divinely laid out for me? The one I will learn from, enjoy, and be transformed by? Am I doing what I should be doing—for me? Am I in my rightful place?

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